The Characters and Faces and Shoes of Bill Pullman

Chapter 4
"Cowboys and Soldiers"
The Year: 1989

Howdy! Glad to see you made it to this end of town. Kick the dirt off your boots outside, then come inside and sit a spell.

Buck Latham Cold Feet Since I haven't seen this one either(!), I'm making an assumption based on the cast of characters that Buck Latham is Monte Latham's brother (and Monte appears to be the star of the show). The critics didn't like it, but a user reviewed it more favorably. The bad news is first; the good news follows. Neither article mentions Buck. COLD FEET (R) By Hal Hinson Washington Post Staff Writer May 22, 1989 If they gave a prize for chummy in-jokiness, Cold Feet, a brain-damaged hipster Western starring Keith Carradine and Sally Kirkland, would take it. And if you feel excluded, shut out or just plain bored, join the club. You're not alone. Set in the wide-open landscapes of Montana, the picture is an antiheroic genre piece about a pack of demented cowboys and crooks who sneak a fortune in emeralds over the Mexican border in the belly of a valuable stallion named Infidel. (Never mind how.) The story is the shaggiest imaginable and provides little more than an occasion for the characters to flaunt their eccentricities, and the writers their tough-guy poetry. The thing is, it may actually have been funny once. The script was written some 12 years ago by novelists Tom McGuane and Jim Harrison, who worked together, mostly by mail. Ten years later, when director Robert Dornhelm showed an interest, McGuane brought it up to date. Maybe it was even funny on paper. The sensibility of the material is self-consciously insouciant -- these writers have labored hard at their anarchism. Here and there, a kinky line of dialogue will leap out and the attitude of depraved idiosyncrasies the filmmakers had hoped for comes clear. But mostly, Dornhelm stages scenes that are brief elucidations on some cryptic crony code. Watching them is like listening to Big Sky cowpokes trying to crack each other up. Translation is what's desperately needed. The whole point, though, is to be inaccessible, out there, shooting the hipster curl. Carradine, who's naturally off-center, plays the square to Tom Waits' demented beatnik fool. Kirkland is a nyphomaniacal moll dressed in electric pastels who can't get anyone to go to bed with her. And Rip Torn is the sheriff who arrests them (though not until he gets a pair of lizard skin cowboy boots out of the deal first). At rock bottom, the picture wears its chic peculiarity to disguise its ineptitude. It's a con. Even the stallion isn't a stallion. Copyright: The Washington Post IMDb user comments for Cold Feet (1989) Dr. Sunshine Ontario, Canada Date: 27 July 1999 Summary: 80s, thy name is cheese. This is a cheesy movie made about the time Hollywood was running out of cheesy movies and entering the late 80s/early 90s realm of the truly horrible. You can see the degradation here but it's still quite obviously a true child of the 1980s. I was flipping around on the telly when I came across this fine film. In the scene, a man was hanging out of the passenger-side window of a pick-up truck, traveling down a long desert road, doing sit-ups while shouting, "I'm a man!" over and over again whilst a family, in a station wagon, drove along side the truck looking on in slack-jawed amazement. You can't not love a scene like that. The man turned out to be Tom Waits, who really does steal the movie. Basically, the story is the aftermath of another zany jewel heist caper with a number of even zanier characters. The main characters are a shifty cowboy (Carradine), his obsessed almost-wife (Kirkland) and their unstable hit man acquaintance (Waits). Waits' performance is over-the-top - which is really the only way to go in a cheesy 80s comedy - and saves the movie from mediocrity. It's a fun movie. Laugh at the jokes, laugh at the circumstances, laugh at the movie, laugh with the movie, laugh on the inside ... it doesn't matter. If this movie can bring a little joy to the movie watching aspect of your life, isn't it worth the ride? Giving credit where credit is due, this boot will take you to the article itself.

Lt. Henry Tibbetts Home Fires Burning Home Fires Burning is a Hallmark Hall of Fame made-for-TV movie that, as I understand it from other Web sources, is not available on video, but it plays occasionally on the Lifetime channel. As a result, I can't buy it or see it unless I accidentally stumble across the listing in TV Guide, which I don't study word for word or page for page as a general rule, which means that I can tell you nothing about the movie from my own perspective right now. The most descriptive and generally positive article I could find for this movie is the following: Home Fires Burning by Mary Cochrane-McIver (1999) This story begins on July 5, 1944 in a small Southern town in the USA. Jake Tibbetts, a dedicated but cantankerous newspaper editor, eventually finds himself at odds with his wife, grandson, and best friend. Jake's son, Henry, is a lieutenant in an infantry company fighting on the European front. Jake blames Henry for the death of Henry's wife in a car accident many years ago. The working out of their relationship and past conflicts are at the heart of the film. Home Fires Burning was originally broadcast on 29 January 1989 as a Hallmark Hall of Fame production. Filmed entirely on location in Georgia, it has rich, interesting characters, a beautiful location, and a fascinating story set at a pivotal time in America. However, the film gives an impression of just skimming the surface, as though the format didn't allow enough time to develop the characters and depict enough incidents to express the story's theme. Most of the principal actors are stage veterans, and their work is a joy to watch. Our man Bill gives a compelling, haunting perfomance as Henry. His character is in so much pain, it's tough to watch. This role gives a good measure of what Bill is capable of as an actor. Neil Patrick Harris (as Henry's son) also does a wonderful job; their scene together is a standout. Note: Mary is one of us humble Bill Pullman fans who contributes her writing reviews to The Bill Pullman Fan Page where I found this article.